A new EU directive suggests the technophobes are starting to embrace e-commerce potential.

The bureaucrats of the European Union seem finally to have woken up to the largely untapped potential of the internet - with regulatory proposals to bar national restrictions on e-commerce, published last week, representing the first steps towards a single electronic market in Europe.

The directive proposes that online retailers will be regulated only by the laws of the country in which they are based, even if they ...